"We Publish as Much From the Slush Pile as is Publishable." A Chat With Seth Luke, Editor of JuxtaProse

JuxtaProse was founded in 2015 by editors Ashley Schellhous and current Editor-in-chief, Seth Luke. Based in Idaho, their vision was to juxtapose both emerging and established writers as well as local and global ones. To that end, they’ve been very successful. JuxtaProse is the home of works written by both first-timers and writers of international acclaim. With a monthly readership of over 5,000, they publish fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and photography. Seth Luke tells us more about the journal’s mission and offers his unique and honest perspective on the submission process.

Interview by Brianne Kohl

What does the word JuxtaProse mean to you?

Well, we're a bunch of English majors, so we enjoy our wordplay. One of our founding editors suggested the name and we all liked it, we felt like it was pretty catchy, plus it hints that idea of Juxtaposition that we really like.

A juxtaposition is a powerful concept for a literary magazine—finding the truth of a thing by positioning two thoughts or ideas together for a contrasting effect. Do you look for juxtapositions when you’re selecting work for publication?

I think Juxtaposition probably describes our editorial process more than anything. We're all writers too, so we know how hard it can be to get those first few publication credits. So, from the get-go, we wanted to create a place where we could publish students and emerging writers, and even people who'd never been published before, alongside more established individuals. Like a place where emerging authors could feel like they had a real chance of getting published alongside their heroes. So, like in our second issue we had this undergrad who had never been published before, and we published them alongside David Lee, who was a finalist for the position of U.S. Poet Laureate back in 2001. In our last issue, we had another never-before published author who got to be published alongside Stephen Dunn. That kind of thing's important to us.

We also try to publish writers from different countries, I believe we're up to 11 different ones now, although honestly, that's something I want us to do even better at. We also like to publish work on a variety of themes and subjects, not just your tried-and-true stereotypical family drama stuff, although we love that when it's done really well. But we also love experimental stuff, and flash fiction and speculative fiction when any of that's done really well. We've published micro fiction and micro essays, we've published fairy tales and time travel stories. Now, that's not the bulk of what we publish, but it's also not the bulk of what we receive.

We're not going to publish something just because it's experimental or different, honestly, if anything we might be a little harder on it, just because we don't publish micro essays or fairy tales all the time, so when we do we want it to be the best possible—kind of show that those forms really can offer just as much as their more traditional counterparts—but at the same time, we're also going to be rooting for those pieces even more, because we really do like to publish that stuff.

At the end of the day, we just want to be able to honestly say we publish the best material we get regardless of the writer's background, or experience level, or genre, or anything else, and I really do feel that we make a valiant effort to be true to that. But when we can do that and showcase kind of a cross-section of different sorts of writers, then I think that's definitely when we are all happiest.

What is your editorial process? What does your average week look like?

So a big part of my personal background comes from film. I've done a fair amount of freelance screenwriting, and before JuxtaProse I was a film critic at a local newspaper and a movie site, and the person who first piqued my interest in film criticism was Roger Ebert. He has this really great quote, this won't be verbatim, but essentially, he says "the key to successful criticism is being able to separate personal preference from objective quality." I shared that with Ashley (Schellhous, my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief) and she really loved it, and that's been kind of the guiding principle of our editorial approach since day one.

If there's two pieces that we're considering, and I like one more, but I think the other one's stronger, then I'll go with the stronger one every time. Because, ultimately JuxtaProse isn't supposed to be about "us" the editors, it's supposed to be about our readers and if a piece is really strong then it's going to have people that it speaks to, and who get really passionate about it, even if I'm not one of them. I don't feel like being an editor should be a license to just force-feed whatever you personally like upon your audience. It all goes back to that Ebert quote, just because you’re an editor, or critic, or whatever doesn't mean that you suddenly have infallible taste, so you shouldn't act (or worst yet, expect others to act) like you do.

In terms of the mechanics of the editorial process though, our team's spread throughout the country—we even have an editor now who’s in Iceland. So, we don't ever really meet up in person. Instead, our editorial assistants add each piece to a Google Doc as it comes in and there's a column for each editor within that genre to respond to it. Every piece gets read by every editor in its genre and they each vote on it and, unless it's a real clear "strong no," they'll add some comments about why they voted the way they did. Then we meet each Thursday on Google Hangouts, I meet with each of the genre heads (Mackenzie Branson in Nonfiction, Ian Haver in Fiction, and Megan Murphy in Poetry) and afterward they split up and meet with their respective genres and discuss individual submissions in detail—as many as warrant it. Then we make assignments, and read the new material that comes in, and we meet up again the following Thursday.

You publish emerging writers side by side with established writers. How much of your content comes from the slush pile? Do you solicit writing from established writers?

Yeah, we love publishing emerging authors, I think that's the best part of the job for all of us. Nothing gets us excited like publishing a solid piece from someone who’s never been published before. For the first issue almost everything we published was solicited because we didn't have a readership yet, but after that first issue we were like, "Do we keep doing this? Is this normal? Do other journals do this?" So, we reached out and asked the editors at some of the journals we really admired and they all told us pretty much the same thing—about two-thirds of what they published was solicited. I probably shouldn't say which journals they were, I don't know if they'd appreciate that, but they're pretty major ones that we really look up to, so we kind of adopted that as a rule of thumb.

The real answer though is we publish as much from the slush pile as is publishable—otherwise what's the point of even having one? Like we're all writers as well too, and we know how frustrating and disappointing it is to get a rejection letter, why even have people submit if you're not going to give their stuff a fair chance? But at the same time, it was kind of reassuring to hear from those other editors, that even if you're The Great American Lit Journal, you still solicit quite a bit of work just to kind of hedge your bets. So, our mandate is, if we like something enough, then we'll publish it no matter how many other pieces we've already accepted—and if we really are booked for the issue, then we'll accept it for the following one—but about 66% ends up being solicited and 33% comes from the slush pile. That's been pretty consistent, but there are occasional exceptions, sometimes there's more great stuff from the slush pile than usual and that's when we wind up with longer issues.

Do you request rewrites if you like a piece that isn’t quite there yet? How far are you willing to work with a writer in terms of editing?

Yeah, absolutely. One thing we've learned is that, if you love a piece, you accept it, even if it’s not at its full potential. Because you never know how long it might be until you get another piece you feel that strongly about. Of course, like I mentioned earlier, we try our best to be objective and pick the material that's actually "the best" of what we receive and not just the stuff we personally like. But we're all human, so an emotional connection is definitely part of it, and sometimes that's really tough to be objective about. Sometimes you get a piece that just really connects, and you can tell it has the potential to be great, but just isn't quite there yet. Most of the time the revisions are relatively small, but there've been a handful that have been more extensive. I can think of two in particular where we asked for more extensive revisions. Even in those cases though, it's still usually a combination of a lot of small changes, rather than any really huge ones. Either that or it's asking them to cut material, there was one time where we asked an author to cut like the first 4 pages of their story. Yet, it's pretty rare for us to ask them to substantially add to a story, most short stories and essays we see are longer than they actually need to be, rather than the other way around.

Do you see a lot of trends cycle through your submissions? If so, how much does that zeitgeist influence the pieces you select for publication?

You know, I don't really think so. But then again, we've also only been around for two years, so who knows maybe another 10 years from nowwe'll be able to better point out that, "Oh yeah, during this stretch there was this trend and then later it was this one." But if there were noticeable trends, I'd like to think that wouldn't influence us too much, like if a story was really good, but really trendy, that wouldn't significantly help or hurt it.

Do you pay attention to cover letters and author bios when considering a submission?

Yes. I think part of that might just be because I've always agonized over my own cover letters, trying to make them as professional as possible, so I'd feel kind of bad if other writers did the same and then we just didn't even look at them. I really do think they serve a practical purpose, though. Like ultimately the work is what matters, not the cover letter, you can send the best cover letter in the world and we still might not accept your piece, and there have been some really excellent pieces we've accepted that were accompanied by terrible cover letters. But we really make a very, very strong effort to keep familiar with the lit journal community. And unfortunately, as an editor your time is limited, you don't have time to read every piece all the way through. So, I think what a cover letter does for us is, you look at their cover letter and if they've been published in a bunch of other journals you really admire then you're like "Okay, obviously they're capable of writing some great stuff," so then if you read their piece and it doesn't grab you in the first couple of pages, maybe you stick with it a little longer than you ordinarily would have.

At the same time though, it's so easy to start a journal now, especially an online one, literally anyone can do it, and not all journals have very high bars for quality. That's not a slight against online journals, there are a lot of absolutely stellar ones, you just have to be discerning. Because if you say you've been published in Lit Journal X and I've read Lit Journal X and never been impressed by a single story I've seen in it—or we've had 20 other people submit work who've also been published in Lit Journal X and they're submissions have all been really weak—then, as an editor, I might go into your piece with a bit of trepidation.

Sometimes we get people who list like 10 or 20 Lit Journal X's in their bio, or they'll say that they've only been writing for three months and they've already been published in 30 journals and then we see the list of journals and it's not really surprising. In those cases, if I'm being honest, we'll probably go into your story with a big, heaping amount of trepidation, and some people might say that's not fair, but at the end of the day your piece is still going to be read by every editor in its genre no matter where you've been published at. The moral of the story is just make sure you're getting published in places that publish the sort of material you'd want your work to be associated with. Because editors read, most of them read a lot.

Do you submit your writers for national awards? If so, which ones?

Absolutely: the Pushcart Prize anthology, Best of the Net, and the Best American series: Short stories, essays, and poetry.

What do you think a literary journal’s responsibility is regarding social justice or activism? What role do you think art plays in furthering social change?

Years ago, I remember going to this training conference for my job at the time—it was kind of like this sales type thing—and we had this former vice president of a pretty big company speak to us, he had since quit and was working for this humanitarian organization, kind of like an advocate for them. And he'd go around and try to convince people why the work this organization was doing mattered. One of the things he said really struck me, he said "You can only teach people if they're willing to be taught. Otherwise, whatever you're going to do is just going to bounce off. So, the trick is you've got to get them to that spot where they're willing to be taught." I think that's really true for all change.

Most of us read because we think it's fun, and that's good, it should be, at least most of the time. But yeah, I think when you're talking actual "art" it definitely should do something to better society. But most people don't like to feel like they're being preached to, and if they do, it's usually a "preaching to the choir" sort of thing. So, you've got to make your case in a way where they're going to be open to what you have to say, instead of it just bouncing off. Sometimes that means you publish stuff about the sort of topics that more readily come to mind when people mention social change, and sometimes that means you publish stuff that's maybe a little less overt, but still has something to say. Really, I think that all good literature has something to say about society. I mean a book like The Grapes of Wrath or Beloved is obviously about social change, but I think that something like Housekeeping or The Catcher in the Rye is too, just maybe in a smaller, less obvious way.

Big change is really important, but small change is important too. And what they have in common, is that all four of those books are first and foremost about really well-drawn characters and their experiences, and then their statements about society just kind of naturally arise from that. That's the kind of stuff we like to publish, sometimes the social statement is obvious, sometimes less so, but both approaches are valid as long as they impact the audience.

What other literary journals do you like to read?

Many more than I could possibly list. The first year that we were around, Ashley and I just read like crazy. There were months where I would read like 40 short stories from current journals or 100 poems, we had a goal to read something from every single journal listed on Clifford Garstang's Pushcart Prize ranking list and we unfortunately just didn't have access so some of them, but we came pretty close, just because we wanted to see what everyone else was doing and kind of get a feel for how to make JuxtaProse feel like an actual journal and not just a little hobby project. So, in the process I developed a very long list of journals that I admire.

I read the kind of standard go-to answers pretty regularly: Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, Paris Review. A bunch of the "state" reviews. In terms of personal favorites though, my absolute favorite for poetry is FIELD, and for smaller poetry journals I really, really like Boxcar Poetry Review and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Like it blows my mind that those two haven't broken out more. For fiction, Crazyhorse is one of my favorites, and Conjunctions. For nonfiction, I think The Sun and Orion publish just about the best that there is. Little Star doesn't do nonfiction, but they're absolute top-notch for both fiction and poetry, and Shenandoah is really good for all three. I used to live in Baltimore, so I have a soft spot for Baltimore Review, that's another strong but comparatively small journal that I'm surprised doesn't get more attention.

Are there any specific writers that you have on a wish list somewhere?

For a long time, Lydia Davis was right at the top of that list, but we actually just published a story by her. Alberto Rios is another one we've kind of been pining after for a while, and we published him in our current issue. Marilynne Robinson and Charles Simic would be absolute dream choices, but there are a lot of others who'd be right up there too: Natasha Tretheway, Ted Kooser, Rita Dove, Ursula K. Le Guin, Louise Glück, Li-Young Lee, Paul Harding, Molly Antepol, Gerald Vizenor, Eowyn Ivie, Bob Shacocis, Karen Joy Fowler, Jennifer Egan, Rebcca Makkai, there are literally hundreds. Simon Perchik and Lance Larsen are two amazing writers that we admired, and had the fortune to publish early on. They kind of gave us hope that the Lydia Davises and Alberto Rioses and the rest of these might follow in time.

How important do you think social media and technology is in reaching new readership and promoting your magazine? How proactive do you want your writers to be in terms of promotion?

I think it's absolutely essential. One of my friends and I used to joke about Blockbuster and how they used to be like the king of home video, like nobody could touch them, and now they don't even exist anymore. It's not like Netflix or Redbox just suddenly took over their empire overnight. It was a really slow, gradual process and they had plenty of time to adapt but they didn't feel the need to, or at least not until it was too late. I think the internet and publishing world is kind of like that, and social media's definitely a huge part of that.

A lot of journals are still print only, and some of them get along very well. I was talking to the managing editor of one journal at AWP 2015 and he told me how they're readership had increased—I seriously think it was by like 5,000—just some astronomical number—in the past two years. But social media had just been a very, very important role in that. And they gave free subscriptions to universities and libraries, increased the size of their contest prizes, and I think made it free or really heavily discounted for subscribers to submit, just did a bunch of stuff to make submitting to the journal a lot more attractive. Their print edition's definitely not going away any time soon, and it's because they've adapted.

So, for an online journal it's a little different. I mean we're really pretty fortunate, our overhead is very low, but still even if you're not selling copies, you want people to read your journal, that's the point. Or at least, it's a big part of the point for us, and it certainly is for those you publish. So yeah, social media's important. I mean, most of your current potential readers are on there, and near well all of your future potential readers are, so it just makes sense. It's one of the most accessible ways to help grow your readership, which means its growing your submissions pool too.

Of course, we appreciate it when the writers we publish promote it when we publish them. We ask them to post it on their social media channels—Facebook, and Twitter and their blog, whichever of those three they have. We get that they're busy. It would be really easy for them not to, and we're not going to hate them or anything if they don't, but I don't think writers realize what an impact such a small thing like that has. I mean we have a pretty sizable social media following, definitely not the biggest out there, but considerably larger than some journals that have been around a lot longer than us, but still, when they post that, they're going to introduce new readers and writers to us.

We've had people that we've published, who discovered us because their friend posted on Facebook that we were publishing them. It's just a really invaluable resource for journals, a small grace that the writers can do that has the potential to pay tremendous dividends. We don't specifically ask them to do anything beyond those three—Facebook, Twitter, and blog—but really, I say the more proactive they want to be about it, the better. And of course, it goes both ways, we should be doing our best to hype up the fact that we're publishing them, and we really try to. Even after the fact, if we see that a past contributor has a new piece in another journal, we'll do a Facebook post telling people to go read it.

Other than “read the journal before you submit” which is an evergreen tip for all writers submitting to any magazine, what advice do you have for writers who want to submit something to JuxtaProse?

I had the opportunity to sit down with David Lee once, who I think I mentioned earlier, just a really amazing, successful poet, and he told me that the key to becoming a successful writer is to "get away from escapist reading." I think that can sound pretty harsh, but basically what he meant was, you should read what you enjoy, but more importantly, you should read to become the kind of writer you want to be. So, whatever you want to write—whether that's traditional literary fiction, or young adult fantasy, or nature poetry—whatever it is, just find the people who are doing it the absolute best, and make that your reading diet. Because whoever you're consuming as a reader are going to become your primary influences, whether its consciously or subconsciously.

I'd also say make your details count, we get so many pieces that are chock-full of what we call filler details. The writer will say something like "Josephine sat down on the beige couch." Why are telling me that couch is beige? You only have a couple thousand words to tell a story, and far less if you're writing a poem, why are you wasting one of those on beige? Give us a clear image. Use your details to build atmosphere, or tension, or reveal character, or further the plot. Every word should be doing something, ideally, they should be doing multiple things. That's really, really hard to do, but that's why we call writing, when it's done really well, "art."

In terms of submitting to JuxtaProse, we really admire material that can do "more with less," again making every word count. We also really admire material that has, I guess for lack of a better word, "poetic depth" to it. Just like a good poem, we like fiction and nonfiction pieces where you can get something out of it from a first read, but then you can pick up on new layers of meaning, new intricacies, when you re-read it. I think Marilynne Robinson is just about the all-time champ of this in novel form, and Lydia Davis is when it comes to flash fiction. That's one of the reasons she was at the top of our "dream authors to publish" list for so long. Read the flash fiction piece we published in volume 12, or Anthony Varallo's that we published in volume 2, they’re barely 500 words a piece, but they cram more into them then most 5,000 word stories do and that slowly reveals itself as you re-read and re-think them.

Brianne M. Kohl's short stories have appeared in various publications including The Masters Review, The Stoneslide Corrective, and The Bohemyth. She has a novel in-progress. Visit her at briannekohl.com or follow her at twitter.com/BrianneKohl